Personalised products have always been a huge hit among humans, especially when it comes to our sensitive skin. Our skin is the largest organ of our body, and keeping it healthy has always been our prior concern. According to an industry survey, it has been found that most women do not like the products they usually buy because either they weren’t suiting their skin type or the products were not efficacious enough. And that’s where SkinKraft comes into the picture — India’s first AI-driven and dermatologically-approved customised skincare.
To understand how the company is building customised skincare products using artificial intelligence, we spoke to Chaitanya Nallan, the CEO and Co-founder of SkinKraft. “SkinKraft was born to break the notion of “one size fits all”, as well as the vicious cycle of trial and error which leads to unsatisfactory results and thereby, frustration,” said Chaitanya.
At SkinKraft, the team leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence to understand the current skin and hair concerns and goals to custom-curate the products and ingredients based on individual requirements. “We believe everyone is unique in their skin, hair and wellness concerns and goals and ideally should have individualised care-kits that suit their needs,” said Chaitanya.
The Solution & The Tech Behind
It all starts with customers answering a few questions about themselves via the proprietary technology, SkinID. It is usually about 30 questions pertaining to their skin type and lifestyle, choices which might have a direct or indirect bearing on their skin as well as their hair health. Once the questions are answered the platform assesses the same and creates a profile which provides a detailed outline of the user’s skin type and an overview of the on-going concerns and issues that needs to be addressed, in order to have healthy skin and hair.
Armed with this information that has been scooped out through artificial intelligence, machine learning along with data, algorithms and programmes, the user is classified into one of 72 broad profiles, generating an individualised recommendation, also known as, a hyper-personal beauty regime.
Post this, the team moves on to follow-up with the customers to understand their progress and rejig recommendations and product concoctions accordingly. Backed by the extraordinary SkinID profiling system and dermatologically validated ingredients, the company strives to provide the best care for all skin types.
SkinID is a breakthrough skin profiling system that has been designed to analyse skin characteristics and identify specific skin concerns. With the help of the questionnaire data, the system pinpoints the unique skin requirements accurately. As a matter of fact, the SkinID questionnaire is divided into four parts where the first and second part deal with the current skin issues and skincare routine, while part three and fourth deal with the lifestyle habits and persistent skin characters. With product iterations, the platform leverages data and algorithms to optimise sensory match, efficacy and natives for bringing out a personalised skincare product for customers.
Traditionally, the company only creates over the counter products for people irrespective of their skin characteristics. SkinKraft aims to change this with a regimen explicitly formulated for skin type mentioned, and maintain 100% transparency in their approach and refrain from any false claims.
Explaining the solution, Chaitanya said, “Data has shown us that every user has a unique skin-type and it reacts very differently to different ingredients.”
At SkinKraft, answering the questions is critical to help the AI platform understand the skin of the users better. Based on parameters like locational whereabouts, exposed weather patterns, eating and sleeping habits, among others, the advanced algorithm concludes the right ingredients required for the particular user’s skin profile, curating the right cleanser, moisturiser, serum for an individualised experience.
Currently, the website is hosted on Shopify, and parts of it are built using React, whereas, the Android and iOS apps which are yet to be released in the market, are being built using Flutter. The startup is currently using NoSQL and cloud functions for their backend. “After building and training, all our ML models are also deployed on serverless solutions,” said Chaitanya. “Keeping our entire stack serverless enables us to have high availability and scale infinitely without having to manage any servers, all while keeping the costs low. This ensures that the cost of technology is not added to our products in any way.”
Furthermore, all SkinKraft products are backed by over 10,000 hours of intensive research and collaboration with Indian, Taiwanese, and Japanese dermato-cosmetologists, pharmacists, and pharmaceutical engineers.
Wrapping Up
SkinKraft, so far, has generated over a million skin profile records since the virtual platform was created, and is visited by at least 45 million users every month. The startup has also recently raised $4 million from RPSG Ventures, in its Series A round, which will be utilised for strengthening and expanding its research and development (R&D) labs, overall infrastructure and enhancing the AI-driven data technology for even better accuracy.
SkinKraft aims to be the go-to destination for everyone for their personal care needs, with the belief that customisation is going to be really big with one in three people opting for it in the next five years. “Technology in skincare has made massive developments in the industry so far. With this, we want to lead the custom-care segment in India, and offer our users the best possible results in the coming years,” concluded Chaitanya.
